Kids Email

KidsEmail.org is a great way to introduce your kids to the world of email.

Posted: Nov 16th, 2012

KidsEmail.org is a great way to introduce your kids to the world of email.

Let’s face it, kids as young as five and six years old are emailing people they know such as grandma and grandpa and even learning to send photos and videos. But as we all know, emailing can get addictive and it doesn’t take much for kids to get into trouble. Many emails today use other people’s names to send emails with links to questionable sites and many of those have viruses ready to infect your computer with a simple click. KidsEmail.org helps keep the kids and your computer safe. It also allows YOU to control who can contact them, what they can see AND when they can actually email.

KidsEmail is so confident in their service that they offer a free 30 day trial. Once you as the parent register, you are sent an activation code to confirm who you are. As a parent, you’ll be happy to know that you won’t need a credit card to sign up and it only takes a few minutes to register.

Now you can choose an email address but it must end with @kidsemail.org. You can also choose a display name that appears when your kid sends an email. Older kids can use an email address that ends in @kmail.org as well. The 30 day trial however only allows for 3 children to be added.

You can now enter acceptable email addresses into their contact list and unacceptable addresses in the blocked list. One of our favorite features is selecting what the kid can and cannot receive in the safety settings such as:

Receiving email only from those in the contact list. Emails from those not on the list are sent to your email address (the one used to register with) for approval or rejection. If rejected, you can automatically send a message to the sender saying that the email must be approved by you first.

You can have a copy of all emails sent to your kid, sent to you as well.

You can have all images and links removed from the email.

You can control what attachments are allowed such as photos, PDFs or even videos.

It also allows you to filter bad words but don’t rely on this feature. We were able to slip a few nasty ones in our tests but since copies were also sent to the parent’s email address, the parent would be made aware and could take appropriate action.

For outgoing emails, a tagline can be attached to the bottom stating that the email is originating from a kid while a copy of the email sent can be forwarded to your email address as well.

Older kids may want to edit their contact list themselves and they can with your permission but you still can view who they’ve added.

Younger kids will like the colorful and simple page themes that are available such as a dog, cat, princess or even an iPod. Writing an email is as simple as any other program and allows the kids to format the text, add emoticons and attach files.

For the older kids the themes available were considered “okay” by our teens and we’re certain that more appealing designs will be introduced.

Sending emails were very easy as well. The additional feature of allowing the older kids to sort and store their messages in different folders can be useful. Once created however, a red “X” is placed next to it. This is to allow the kid to delete the folder and its contents but does however give the impression that there is something wrong with the folder. A different symbol indicating delete would be preferred.

Another great feature allows parents to control when the kids are allowed to use the program. The time restriction page allows you to select which days of the week and hourly blocks they are allowed to use the program. You can even “ground” your kid for a set amount of time or until a specific date. When your kid tries to log on, a photo of a kid dressed in stripes with a ball and chain pops up with a message saying that they’ve been grounded and that it ends at a certain day or time.

The activity log allows you to keep track of everything your kids do with the program.

In our testing, we sent a number of emails to the program. Some with attachments and some with very rude words which were easily caught by the system. When we forwarded an email that featured the line “Lead singer of Iron Maiden Bruce Dickinson,” it appeared in the kid’s inbox as “Lead singer of Iron Maiden Bruce CENSORED inson.” We also forwarded emails with non-threatening images that were removed as well as per our settings.

After the 30 day trial, you can subscribe month to month for $4.95 or purchase the service for a year for $2.99 a month AND they offer another month for free.

Our Recommendation: Yes!

KidsEmail.org is a great way to introduce the little ones to email and to keep them and your home computer as safe as possible. Older kids will also find it useful until they discover how to open their own Hotmail account without their parents knowing.

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